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[quote=Anonymous]In many ways, STEM education is easier than the humanities.

There is a pretty straight forward lockstep progression in math at the pre-college level and well-established curricula. Typically, that ends with calculus in high school. At the local privates, a large proportion of those headed to elite colleges, including most future humanities majors, take calculus and the AP science classes. Only a minority of CalTech and MIT students enter having already taken a class on linear algebra or differential equations. Intro biology, chemistry, and physics are also very straightforward. At both the high school and college level, those are pretty much the same all over the country. So if I only cared about STEM, then the intro texts and labs can be had pretty much anywhere - public or private high school, state U or MIT.

In contrast, there is a huge variation in humanities and social sciences. The typical American high school graduate reads very little, writes very poorly, and has almost no sense of history. The gap between what is expected at an elite college and a flagship public university is huge. Part of the problem is that it is next to impossible to teach college level literature in public high schools because the books would be too controversial. History and government are limited to the most basic facts because it sets off ideological debates. Google the new AP US history curriculum to see what the constraints are. So private schools can offer so much more than public schools. Whether my child ends up in a STEM field or not, I want him to have a far richer education in literature, art, and the social sciences than can usually be found in public schools.

Complaints about private school math programs are usually at the lower school level. There is often a preference for traditional approaches and as much acceleration as possible.  If you take a long view, all the best students end up pretty much in the same place in high school, even if they don't go into STEM fields. So focusing too much on when a child learns the multiplication tables or starts algebra is kind of pointless.  
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